The Gallery
198 routes · limestone · 6,704 ft
What's here
5.7 to 5.13, mostly around 5.10.
Counted from the 198 climbs here that carry a grade. Shown only where there are at least 5 of them — below that the shape is noise.
How well located
Base placed (one source) 8 Base estimated from neighbours 4 Position on wall known 183 Crag only 3
The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Eh, Nice Route, El Lagarto, Lounge Lizard, Tunnel Vision, 666, Well Hung, Chomping at the Bit, I Can Smell Your Thoughts (8 climbs, about 240 seconds on Far Side) would place up to 67 more climbs between them. Survey the wall →
“Up to” because the estimate between two surveyed routes is only used when they turn out to be close enough together on the ground.
The guidebook for this area
Shelf Road Rock - Rick Thompson - 3rd ed. every crag it covers
The book has the topos, the descriptions and the local knowledge this page can't. Buying it helps support the people who know the crag best.
Rock, from the geologic map
One or more Ordovician fms (Fremont Limestone, Harding Sandstone, Manitou Limestone) — limestone, minor sandstone. Ordovician, about 483 to 451 million years old.
Fremont Limestone, Harding Sandstone, and Manitou Limestone
This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:500,000 sheet (Horton and others, 2017, U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1052). The point can be a few hundred metres from the rock, a cliff often stands on the line between two units, and at that scale a line on the map is about 500 m wide on the ground, so the wall itself may be the neighbouring unit. The rock named at the top of this page comes from the public geology of this area; this card is the map's answer. Every crag on this unit: One or more Ordovician fms. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.
On the map since 1894
The USGS has mapped this ground since 1894. 20 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Public domain, U.S. Geological Survey. The sheet shows the ground as the survey found it then, which is why a trail or road you know may be missing. Every sheet over this point, 1894 to 1989: USGS topoView.
From the archives
Photographs of this area held by the Library of Congress, oldest first. Every one carries the Library's own "no known restrictions on publication"; anything else is left out.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
Report this item
Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.
Routes
Far Side
- 1 Eh, Nice Route 5.9+
- 2 Diamarrhia Fullenkrap 5.10a
- 3 Get Your Wings 5.10c
- 4 Unknown 5.7 5.7
- 5 Kidz Bop Crack 5.8+
- 6 Unknown 5.8 5.8
- 7 A.W.E.S.O.M.- O 4000 5.10a/b
- 8 Velociraptor 5.10a/b
- 9 Gila 5.10b
- 10 Lizzard With a View 5.11b
- 11 Big Lizard In My Backyard 5.11
- 12 Arthur's Lip Service 5.11b
- 13 El Lagarto 5.11a
- 14 Far Side's Trad Route 5.8+
- 15 Wedgie 5.8
- 16 Flying High Again 5.12-
- 17 Iguana Breath 5.11a/b
- 18 Black is Beautiful 5.12b
- 19 Three Holes Make A Face 5.10d
- 20 Thick as Thieves 5.12a
- 21 The Lizard King 5.10a
- 22 5.6 Crack 5.9-
- 23 Mary Iguana 5.10b/c
- 24 Lizard of Oz 5.8+
- 25 Lounge Lizard 5.10b
- 26 [Redacted] 5.10b
- 27 Ragged Ass Tinkering Cow Thieves 5.9
- 28 First Class Tickets to The Resurrection 5.10a
- 29 Too Many Notes, Your Majesty 5.7+
- 30 Facing the Animal 5.11a
- 31 Detachable Pillar Arete 5.10b/c
- 32 Centurion 5.8+
- 33 Mardi Gras 5.11b/c
- 34 Lord of the Warlocks 5.11c
- 35 Flakeus Maximus 5.11a
- 36 Arblow Hard 5.11b
- 37 Tunnel Vision 5.10a
- 38 Portable Airplane (aka Robbin' the Hood) 5.9-
- 39 You Can't Handle The Truth 5.9
- 40 Shelfie 5.10b
- 41 Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow 5.10d
- 42 Exorcist 5.11c
- 43 To the Max Von Sydow 5.10-
- 44 Schindler's Pissed 5.9-
- 45 Zu den händen von Herrn Wiesenthal 5.8+
- 46 Wir Sind Die Größten 5.10a
- 47 Anselmo Power 5.8+
- 48 SETI 5.8-
- 49 666 5.9-
- 50 RAMMESES 5.9
- 51 Not For Girly Men 5.11b
- 52 Ahkenaten 5.8-
- 53 Sympathy For The Devil 5.11a
- 54 Induction Oven 5.10a/b
- 55 Hume's Horror 5.9+
- 56 S.L.I.M.F.A.S.T. 5.10d
- 57 Mental Hopscotch 5.10c
- 58 Don't Worry, Baby 5.10a
- 59 The Crush of Love 5.10a
- 60 The Cry of Love 5.10c
- 61 Well Hung 5.11d
- 62 Crow's Nest 5.8
- 63 Creepy Ass Cracker 5.8
- 64 Wun Dum Fuk 5.10a
- 65 One Ton Son 5.8
- 66 So Emotional 5.7
- 67 Party Hardy Tardy Marty 5.8
- 68 Pack Mule 5.7
- 69 Abracadabra 5.9
- 70 In the Region of the Butterfly Pump 5.11a/b
- 71 Blackshirts 5.10b/c
- 72 Elvis is Everywhere 5.10b
- 73 Chomping at the Bit 5.13a
- 74 Coffee Bitch 5.8-
- 75 I Can Smell Your Thoughts 5.11c
Fish Wall
- 1 Unknown 5.10a 5.10a
- 2 Living in a Vacuum 5.10c/d
- 3 Call to Arms 5.12a
- 4 Sea of Joy 5.11c
- 5 Dolphin Dancing 5.11c
- 6 Have a Blast 5.12a
- 7 Wading Through a Ventilator 5.11d
- 8 Happy Nightmare Baby 5.10b
- 9 Sand Dollar 5.10a
- 10 Tuna! Tuna! Tuna! 5.11b/c
- 11 Soluble Fish 5.11b/c
- 12 Seaweed 5.9
- 13 Sockeye 5.10a
- 14 Wild Kippers 5.11a
- 15 Lost in Your Ocean 5.10a
- 16 Sleeps with the Fishes 5.10b
- 17 Crabzilla 5.10c
Incredible Hulk Boulder, The
- 1 Somatophrique Physique 5.12c
- 2 Super Phrique 5.13a
- 3 The Mutant 5.12a
Lou Ferrigno Boulder
- 1 Dog Food Isn't Pretty 5.10d
- 2 Forearm and Head 5.9+
Menses Prow
- 1 Armies Of Metaphors 5.11c
- 2 Abscessed Words to Climb 5.11a
- 3 Metaphysical Fictions 5.11a
- 4 Turbo Charged, Inter-Cooled Meat Machine 5.10b/c
- 5 Pig Dictionary 5.12a
- 6 Stratabulge 5.12b
- 7 My What a Big Bulge 5.11d
- 8 Thirteen Engines 5.11c
- 9 Liquid Affair 5.11b
- 10 Lick My Love Pump aka Love Pump 5.10b
- 11 Jumbo Pumping Love 5.10d
- 12 The B.O.S.S. Method 5.8
- 13 Killer COVID 5.9+
- 14 Dumb Waiter 5.9+
- 15 Smart Server 5.10a
- 16 Back for More 5.10c
- 17 Caught in the Middle 5.8
- 18 I am a Viking 5.10a
- 19 Flashback To Acid Beach 5.10d
- 20 Slender Fungus 5.11b
- 21 Graceland 5.11d
- 22 Bat Crack 5.9+
- 23 Shelf's Worst Route 5.11d
- 24 True to Tradition/Tucker's Faith 5.7+
- 25 Original Route 5.7+
- 26 Sick of Tradition 5.8
- 27 Red Dog 5.9
- 28 Pueblo Gringos 5.10a/b
- 29 First Blood 5.8
- 30 Lamont's Period 5.8
- 31 Period Epic 5.9
- 32 Prima Nocta 5.8
- 33 The Baroque Period 5.8
- 34 Period Piece 5.8-
- 35 Light Days 5.11a
- 36 Scratch and Claw 5.12b/c
- 37 Smokin' Crack 5.10b
- 38 Cosmic Thing 5.12a
- 39 Dealin' Crack 5.10a
- 40 First Strike 5.11b/c
- 41 Chiba Chiba 5.12a
- 42 A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing 5.12a
- 43 Sundogs 5.12b
- 44 No Passion for Fashion 5.11b/c
- 45 Weed n' Feed 5.10c/d
- 46 Lunch at the Y 5.11b/c
- 47 After Dark 5.10c
- 48 Menses 5.10d
- 49 The Big Chill 5.10c
- 50 Krakatoa 5.10c
- 51 Fever 5.11b
Mural Wall
- 1 Magnum Gropus 5.11b/c
- 2 Morpheus 5.11a
- 3 M&M 5.12a
- 4 The Far Sky 5.12a
- 5 Montage 5.12d
- 6 Mosaic 5.12b/c
- 7 The Mural 5.12b
- 8 Monet 5.12a
- 9 Motif 5.12a
- 10 Ludlow Massacre 5.11a/b
- 11 Peace Yo 5.11b
- 12 Coldcocked 5.9
- 13 Transition Protocol 5.10d
- 14 Protect the King 5.9-
- 15 Killer Queen 5.9
- 16 Pretty Fastidium 5.11d
- 17 DeMartini 5.7
- 18 Soldier Without Faith 5.10b
- 19 Los Pepes 5.10a
- 20 Anguish and Fear 5.10a
- 21 Block Party 5.10a
- 22 Red Hot Chili Powder 5.10b
- 23 Morrocan Roll 5.10a/b
- 24 Mother of Invention 5.10c
- 25 The Bobbit Effect 5.9+
- 26 Pi 5.12a
- 27 John Cruiser Meloncrimp 5.10b
- 28 Marching Out 5.8
- 29 Stalking Fred 5.10b
- 30 Catching Fred 5.10b
- 31 Unknown 5.11a
- 32 Johnny's Route 5.10a
- 33 Mogwai 5.11b
- 34 Purple People Eaters 5.10a/b
Zoo at the Far Side, The
- 1 Jungle Boogie 5.9
- 2 Petting Zoo 5.10d
- 3 Catitude 5.11a/b
- 4 Pet Peeves 5.10c
- 5 Game Warden 5.9
- 6 Jurassic Parking Lot 5.11a
- 7 Duck Soup 5.10b
- 8 It's a Crab World 5.9+
- 9 Zoo York Kitty 5.11-
- 10 Scorpions 5.10c/d
- 11 Monkey Jungle 5.10a
- 12 Pet Detective 5.9
- 13 Donkey Xote 5.10a
Elsewhere at this crag
- David Banner 5.12c
- Sudden Impact 5.11a
- Unknown 7 5.7
Also within 3 km
- Sand Gulch571 m · 123 routes and 5 boulder problems · 6,712 ft
- The Dark Side1,590 m · 67 routes · 6,769 ft
- The Bach Block1,761 m · 12 routes · 6,542 ft
- The Vault1,945 m · 37 routes · 6,848 ft
- Cactus Cliff2,000 m · 157 routes · 6,939 ft
- Cash Wall2,027 m · 15 routes · 6,986 ft
Straight line between the two crags' map points, each of which can be some way from its rock. For when this wall is full, or the sun has found it.
Photos from climbers
No photos here yet. If you're at the crag, yours would be the first.
Taken at the crag by climbers and published as they sent them. Each one's own location had to be within 0.5 km of this crag before we accepted it. See something that shouldn't be here? Use Report this photo under it and it's hidden at once. Anything else, write to us.
Conditions reported
Nothing reported recently.
Report what you see
Reports are dated and fade on their own: wet rock after 3 days, a bad bolt after a year. No names, no text.
Access & safety
The map point for this crag is on land managed by Bureau of Land Management (federal), in Royal Gorge Field Office.
Land manager from USGS PAD-US (public domain), read 2026-09-29. It is the manager of the crag's map point, which can be a long way from the wall. What you may do on the rock is the manager's to say, not ours.
Rules for all Bureau of Land Management land
- Fees
- Developed campgrounds are fee sites: at Shelf Road, Sand Gulch is $20 a night for an individual site and $40 for a group site, with no drinking water, hook-ups or trash service. Where a fee area is posted, you must register and pay within 30 minutes of entering it.
- Overnight
- Camping more than 14 days in any 30-day period at any one location is prohibited, including in a campground, and afterwards you must move at least 30 air miles. Personal property may not be left unattended anywhere on public land for more than 48 hours.
Read on Bureau of Land Management's own pages, checked 2026-09-29 by John Crawford. What they require, in full, or their own climbing page. These apply to the manager's whole holding; anything specific to this crag is above.
Nearby, from OpenStreetMap
- Toilets
- 704 m away (map)
- Mapped parking
- 673 m away (map)
- Campsite
- Sand Gulch Campground, 770 m away (map)
Distances are a straight line from this crag's map point, which can itself be hundreds of metres off; a road may be much longer. Mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), so a toilet missing here may simply be unmapped. Parking here is what OSM has drawn nearby, not a guidebook's directions.
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